2002 Fredericton Encaenia - Ceremony B
MacLeod, Alistair
Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.)
Orator: Patterson, Stephen E.
Citation:
ENCAENIA, MAY, 2002
ALISTAIR MACLEOD
to be Doctor of Letters
It has been four decades since UNB awarded Alistair MacLeod his Master of Arts diploma in English Literature. Now after his brilliant career in teaching and writing we welcome him back to recognize his fulfillment of the brilliant promise he showed as a student.
We think of him as a Maritimer, and it comes as a surprise to learn that he was born in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. But he was raised in Cape Breton by an extended family of transplanted Highland Scots, he attended Teachers' College and St. FX in Nova Scotia before coming to UNB, and he went on from here to complete his Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame. Almost his entire university teaching career has been at the University of Windsor where he taught English and Creative Writing from 1969 until his retirement two years ago. During that time, he also conducted writing workshops across the country and beyond, notably for eleven years as a member of the literary faculty at the Banff School of Fine Arts. As one of Canada's foremost writers, he has spoken at major conferences in England, Scotland, Denmark, and given readings across Canada, the United States, and Europe. The winner himself of several prestigious literary awards, he has likewise served on many of the leading literary award juries in the country, including the Governor General's Award Committee and the Giller Prize Committee.
But the stuff of his c-v gives us only a hazy outline of the writer, indeed the artist, who is Alistair MacLeod. He speaks to us himself through the pages of his short-stories and his single novel. It is a relatively small body of work, yet each piece is painstakingly crafted to carry us into the hauntingly beautiful world of Scottish immigrants, shaped by hard work and an even harsher climate in Cape Breton, and then scattered, in their later generations, hither and yon as so many Cape Bretoners have been. He writes about memory, constantly playing off the past against the present, the present against the past, remembering beyond the lifetime of his narrators the anecdotes and myths of Highland ancestors, pushed from the barren coasts of Scotland across the sea to an almost equally unforgiving land of trees. He writes about the tensions between the old and the new, between the steadfast simple values of fishermen and miners and the contesting values of the urbanized, the educated, the upwardly mobile. He throws into stark relief the tensions of modern Canadian society, caught between an Americanizing present and memory of a past that will not let go.
The Highland Scots are themselves a metaphor of the central theme of MacLeod's works. They fought against the British at Culloden and within fifteen years were helping the British defeat the French on the Plains of Abraham. As emigrants to the colonies, some found themselves in North Carolina at the time of the American Revolution, and forced to choose sides, took the British side as Loyalists. In one of MacLeod's earliest stories, The Boat, husband and wife descendants of Highlanders recreate the old tension between the simple unrelenting yet orderly life of work and the competing attraction of education, literacy, and the vast universe of literature. Their son, torn between the two, tries to choose both: both Dickens and the dour highland work ethic. Alistair MacLeod himself has chosen both: the world of culture, literacy, and the arts, unmistakably English, and the hauntingly persistent culture of the Highland Scots, a memory and a compulsion.
General Wolfe is said to have insisted upon taking Highland Scots into battle because they were fierce fighters, they were loyal, and if they got killed, it would be "No Great Mischief." Chosen as the title of Alistair MacLeod's novel, it brilliantly captures theme and metaphor in its rich irony. Less a first novel than the crowning achievement of a career, No Great Mischief has propelled its author to the forefront of the Canadian literary community. Praised by almost every major Canadian writer of fiction as one of the best novels of our time, it has won for its author the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction, the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, The Trillium Award for Fiction, the CAA-MOSAID Technologies Inc. Award for Fiction, the Canadian Booksellers Association Fiction Book of the Year and Author of the Year, and the International Impac Dublin Literary Award. In 2000, Alistair MacLeod was elected to the Royal Society of Canada, and in 2001, he won the Portia White Prize for Excellence in the Arts, awarded by the Province of Nova Scotia.
Like the themes of so many of his stories, Alistair MacLeod's life straddles two places. He has a home in Windsor where, with his wife Anita, he has reared six children. And in summer, they live in Cape Breton, where in a solitary cabin overlooking the water towards the setting sun, he continues to write. One feels that his brilliant career has just begun. We wish him many more years of continued success.
From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 4
ALISTAIR MACLEOD
to be Doctor of Letters
It has been four decades since UNB awarded Alistair MacLeod his Master of Arts diploma in English Literature. Now after his brilliant career in teaching and writing we welcome him back to recognize his fulfillment of the brilliant promise he showed as a student.
We think of him as a Maritimer, and it comes as a surprise to learn that he was born in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. But he was raised in Cape Breton by an extended family of transplanted Highland Scots, he attended Teachers' College and St. FX in Nova Scotia before coming to UNB, and he went on from here to complete his Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame. Almost his entire university teaching career has been at the University of Windsor where he taught English and Creative Writing from 1969 until his retirement two years ago. During that time, he also conducted writing workshops across the country and beyond, notably for eleven years as a member of the literary faculty at the Banff School of Fine Arts. As one of Canada's foremost writers, he has spoken at major conferences in England, Scotland, Denmark, and given readings across Canada, the United States, and Europe. The winner himself of several prestigious literary awards, he has likewise served on many of the leading literary award juries in the country, including the Governor General's Award Committee and the Giller Prize Committee.
But the stuff of his c-v gives us only a hazy outline of the writer, indeed the artist, who is Alistair MacLeod. He speaks to us himself through the pages of his short-stories and his single novel. It is a relatively small body of work, yet each piece is painstakingly crafted to carry us into the hauntingly beautiful world of Scottish immigrants, shaped by hard work and an even harsher climate in Cape Breton, and then scattered, in their later generations, hither and yon as so many Cape Bretoners have been. He writes about memory, constantly playing off the past against the present, the present against the past, remembering beyond the lifetime of his narrators the anecdotes and myths of Highland ancestors, pushed from the barren coasts of Scotland across the sea to an almost equally unforgiving land of trees. He writes about the tensions between the old and the new, between the steadfast simple values of fishermen and miners and the contesting values of the urbanized, the educated, the upwardly mobile. He throws into stark relief the tensions of modern Canadian society, caught between an Americanizing present and memory of a past that will not let go.
The Highland Scots are themselves a metaphor of the central theme of MacLeod's works. They fought against the British at Culloden and within fifteen years were helping the British defeat the French on the Plains of Abraham. As emigrants to the colonies, some found themselves in North Carolina at the time of the American Revolution, and forced to choose sides, took the British side as Loyalists. In one of MacLeod's earliest stories, The Boat, husband and wife descendants of Highlanders recreate the old tension between the simple unrelenting yet orderly life of work and the competing attraction of education, literacy, and the vast universe of literature. Their son, torn between the two, tries to choose both: both Dickens and the dour highland work ethic. Alistair MacLeod himself has chosen both: the world of culture, literacy, and the arts, unmistakably English, and the hauntingly persistent culture of the Highland Scots, a memory and a compulsion.
General Wolfe is said to have insisted upon taking Highland Scots into battle because they were fierce fighters, they were loyal, and if they got killed, it would be "No Great Mischief." Chosen as the title of Alistair MacLeod's novel, it brilliantly captures theme and metaphor in its rich irony. Less a first novel than the crowning achievement of a career, No Great Mischief has propelled its author to the forefront of the Canadian literary community. Praised by almost every major Canadian writer of fiction as one of the best novels of our time, it has won for its author the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction, the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, The Trillium Award for Fiction, the CAA-MOSAID Technologies Inc. Award for Fiction, the Canadian Booksellers Association Fiction Book of the Year and Author of the Year, and the International Impac Dublin Literary Award. In 2000, Alistair MacLeod was elected to the Royal Society of Canada, and in 2001, he won the Portia White Prize for Excellence in the Arts, awarded by the Province of Nova Scotia.
Like the themes of so many of his stories, Alistair MacLeod's life straddles two places. He has a home in Windsor where, with his wife Anita, he has reared six children. And in summer, they live in Cape Breton, where in a solitary cabin overlooking the water towards the setting sun, he continues to write. One feels that his brilliant career has just begun. We wish him many more years of continued success.
From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 4
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